unsullied faith was Petr Chelčický whose works, the Postilla or Sunday readings, “Siť Víry” (The Net of Faith) and O šelmě (Of the Beast of Prey) largely influenced Count Leo Tolstoi in forming his non-resistance theory. The Net of Faith especially expounded a simple religion free of the hypocrisy and evil of the nobility and of the cities, living on the labor of the producing class. He advocates at that early date (1390–1460) the separation of church from state. Jan Rokycana, archbishop of Prague, on his return from exile after George of Poděbrad gained control of the capital, though not a prolific writer, was an inspiring speaker and left as a monument the church of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren which carried out in its tenets the essentials which he advocated for true Christians in his writings and speeches. Strangely enough, in later years, he turned against the Brethren whose first firmest supporters were his own pupils.
The contention of all these writers and leaders of thought in Bohemia in the Middle Ages was to the effect that the only true source of the pure law of God was the Bible. It is not to be wondered at that the translation of the Bible, completed near the close of the fourteenth century, was distributed in innumerable hand-written copies, some of which were most beautifully ornamented as, for instance, the Dražďanská Bible (Dresden) made in 1400–1410, and the Olomouc copy in two parts (1417). The first printed Bible in the Czech language was from a new and improved transla-
